


Escalated Conversations

by auselysium



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Drunkenness, M/M, Malex, alien alcohol cause sure why not?, background Maria/Michael
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 05:01:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19144084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auselysium/pseuds/auselysium
Summary: Alex walks in on Maria having a fight with a drunken Michael. When he offers to take him home, things take a path Alex wasn't expecting.





	Escalated Conversations

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt fill for @theballetslipperstheblackhoodie on Tumblr and also my wish to write a drunk Michael trying to kiss Alex but Alex having the clearer head.

"Do you know how embarrassing this is? Having to kick my boyfriend out of my own bar? Again?"

"So sorry to have brought shame upon your fine establishment. _Again_."

"Spare me, Guerin. I'm in no mood."

“Why don't you just stop serving me then?"

"Oh believe me, I’ve thought about it but I have a feeling denying you free booze would only make it worse. Why do you have to get like this?"

“You wouldn’t understand…”

“I never will if you don’t talk to me. Just tell me, Michael. Just tell me what is going on with you?”

“I can’t! Alright? I can’t talk about it…”

It’s easy enough for Alex to recognize the voices echoing across the gravel parking lot outside the Wild Pony. There have been enough of these escalated conversations over the past few months that pretty much everyone in their circle has been privy to one, intentionally or not. Maria’s voice raised, chastising Michael for some antic or another, annoyed but always weaved with amused affection. Michael’s tenor voice, often softly slurred by a tequila buzz.

But there is something different about this exchange. Maria’s voice is urgent and angry and Michael is a desperate kind of drunk. It’s enough of a change from their usual repartee for Alex to close the door to his Jeep softly, the latch catching with a click instead of a slam.

Alex hasn’t shied away from coming to Maria's bar in months following Caulfield and his lonely, un-met day at Michael’s Airstream. He’d told Michael he was tired of walking away, that he was done fighting his father’s battles, and he’d meant it. Maybe part of him even believed he deserved to have a front row view of one of his oldest friends and his soulmate playing their way through the Honeymoon Stage of a relationship. Punishment or reparations for everything he and his family have put Michael through.

And maybe it was his way of keeping tabs, too. An way to insure that everything about Michael and Maria’s relationship reeked of incompatibility. It often felt like he was watching a high school romance. Like Liz and Kyle, maybe, where he liked her and she liked him, the sex was pretty good and there was plenty of playful banter but nothing ever went farther than the surface layers.

“We can go somewhere else,” Kyle had suggested on more than one occasion, his beer bottle tilted at a peevish angle as he’d catch Alex watching them over the tops of the pool tables at the bar. Alex would always shake his head, even offer to get the next round. He needed to see the way Maria’s eyes would shutter over something Michael had said. The way Michael’s face would fall as she moved away to help a customer. It was proof to him that even if Michael had chosen her, he wasn’t falling in love. At least, not in the way he had with Alex - so bone deep it shattered.

“Can’t talk about it period," Maria asks. "Or can’t talk about it with me?”

Alex should hate the manipulative quiver in her voice, but instead he takes an uneven step, announcing his presence. Maria looks up, eyes glinting in the intermittent flash of the repaired neon sign overhead. Her eyes flare at the sight of him. Instead of being shaded by her usual embarrassment and shame at her usurper status, they seem to seek out the help of her old friend, admitting that she’s completely out of her depth when Michael gets like this.

With an obvious clearing of his throat, Alex crosses the parking lot, watching as Michael spins precariously on the heels of his boots. Alex catches him by the elbow just before his unsteady momentum takes him.

“Alright, cowboy, I think that’s enough swashbuckling for one evening don’t you?”

“Cowboys don’t swashbuckle,” Michael snaps, ripping his arm free of Alex’s grasp. “You’re mixing your metaphors, private.” He slurs and swagers and Alex catches him against his chest.

“Bronco wrangling, then. Either way, it’s time to call it a night.”

Alex pulls at the fabric of his coat sleeve but Michael refuses to budge, his face turned firmly away from Alex’s. Alex checks in with Maria, her arms wrapped around herself almost as tightly as the low-cut shirt she’s wearing. He does his best to intimate that if she wants Alex to help clean up her mess, he’s going to need an assist.

“I’ll call you tomorrow, Guerin,” she says. “Give you the chance to sober up.”

Michael snorts, as if he’d been half-waiting for her curt farewell. Then he gives the night sky a slump-shouldered shake of his head. After that, he’s easy enough to maneuver towards Alex’s car.

The roads are quiet that time of night. Just them, the coyotes and dust leaving a long trail behind the wheels. Michael rests his head on the window, his breath even and deep, as if in sleep. He swings the door wide open and lands with a two footed thud after Alex puts his Jeep in park and cuts the engine.

“Your drunken disorderly has been appropriately contained. Mission accomplished. 'Night,” he says with dismissive flick of his hand over his head.

But when Alex follows him into the Airstream he doesn’t bother protesting. Instead, he gives Alex a long look before he begins banging open cabinets in what should be a kitchen. The minimal cooking space is littered with handwritten equations and schematics, solutions solved in a form of math not from this planet. Michael pushes them out of the way to find a clean glass, crouching down to open a lower cupboard and retrieving a bottle of something that looks highly potent. He dumps a healthy pour out.

“Michael…” Alex cautions.

“For you.” Michael turns with the flair of a maitre d’, the glass perched on the pads of his fingers. “I think it’s been well established I’ve had enough and you never got your drink so...”

Alex laughs softly at his drunk host. “Thanks.”

Michael grabs a bottle of acetone from the counter near by and clinks the plastic against Alex’s glass.

“Prophylactic.” Michael smirks at his ability to find and use such a big word even in his state. With a deep swig, he flings himself against his bed, his booted-feet crossing at his ankles and his arm falling over his face.

It’s not like there are a lot of seating options in Michael’s trailer to Alex takes a careful seat on the edge of the same bed, his back straight, putting as much distance as he can from him. It’s not the first time Alex has seen Michael this drunk, but it’s still upsetting. His downward, self-destructive spiral had a very clear launching point.

“How is Max doing?”

“Still dead.” MIchael peeks out from under his arm and Alex meets his look with raised, displeased eyebrows. Michael sighs. “He’s floating in a pod of primordial alien afterlife goo. He’s feeling no pain.”

But Michael clearly is. It’s been months and still no progress has been made on bringing Max back. And while each passing day seems to redouble Liz’s determination, Michael’s despair, and rage, has only deepened and darkened. Alex isn’t sure how much longer Michael will survive the limbo.

“We’re all going to keep working, Michael. Liz won’t ever stop until he’s back with her, you know that. Kyle and I have barely scratched the surface of all the files we got out of Caulfield. I’m sure we’ll find something that will help.”

Michael scoffs. “If you’d told me 10 years ago that my brother’s life would depend on Kyle fucking Valenti I would have laughed in your face. Then probably punched you. Or him.”

“Kyle’s changed. He’s a good friend and he’s as invested in all this as I am.”

“You keep saying that.” Michael’s eyes narrow and Alex ignores the jealousy in his voice, though part of him certainly enjoys it.

Michael head wobbles slightly as he sits up, too quick. He chugs back what’s left of the acetone then throws the bottle across the floor, landing who knows where. His boots follow.

Alex takes the opportunity to try a sip of the unusual alcohol, wincing as it burns at the back of throat and goes warm down into his gut. Whatever this drink is, it probably wasn’t made by any human distillery. Maybe he’s not cooking meth, but Michael is definitely getting creative here in the trailer.

“What were you and Maria fighting about tonight?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you heard?” Alex gives his head an irritated slant and Michael exhales, the abrasive act finally having worn too thin, even for him. He tucks feet under his legs, slinging his elbows over his knees.

“She wants to know things. About my past...about _me_. But I’ve got enough bullshit I’m dealing with right now to try to go all regression therapy on my past.”

“She’s your girlfriend. She deserves to know.”

“Just...don’t want her to.”

“Why?”

“Because it hurts, ok?” Michael snaps. He pulls his knees even closer to his chest. “Every time I talk about it it makes it more real. Turns it into something that I can’t forget. And sometimes…

He closes his eyes knowing he doesn’t need to finish that sentence, not for Alex’s sake.

“I’m a lot, Alex,” he laments. “What I am and what I can do. Growing up in the system and everything that happened there. What Max and Iz and I did to Rosa. And then Noah and my mom and... _you_.”

His hand, stunningly healed, clenches as if testing to feel the pull of scar tissue. Alex wants to take it between his and press away the tension.

“I can’t dump all that on her. And even if I did, I don’t think she’d understand.” He looks up, eyes heavy-lidded and red lined, realization coming across his features.

“But you do, don’t you? You always have. Those terrible things I’ve told you...You always seemed to know what it was like, without even trying. Or you were just there to see those things first hand.”

That’s a shocking truth. Alex’s eyes fall to the liquid rolling against the sides of his glass.

“Sometimes I don’t even get how you can look at me.”

“Look at you?” Michael exhales. “Alex. I told you, I never…”

With surprising clarity, Michael catches Alex’s eye. His unwavering gaze conveys a refrain they’ve both used in the past and doesn’t need repeating; it’s simply known.

_I never look away._

It’s an understood constant of their cosmos. And Alex, as always, feels overwhelmed by the raw intensity of that universal truth.

So when Michael reaches for him, fingers warm on his chin diminishing the space between them, Alex doesn’t pull back. At least, not right away.

He lets Michael kiss him, soft and pliant, almost lazy. He takes in the liquor-ketone taste of him. The deep sounds he makes at the back of throat as his palms, on either side of Alex’s face, angle Alex’s head sideways and his tongue slides deeper into Alex’s open mouth.

Alex has wanted this. Pined for it private moments between sleeping and waking. Wishful fantasies that this might happen again. And now it was.

“Mu-huh.” Alex murmurs softly, pulling away. He licks his lips, hands firm on Michael’s wrists to still him. “You’re drunk.”

“Sure am.” Michael’s fingers are warm at his jaw. “Doesn’t mean I’ve suddenly developed an entire new set of feelings for you. Just wasted to enough to stop denying them.”

It’s more a glance than a kiss the second time, but even the barest brush of Michael’s lips against his is electric. Still, Alex manages to himself pull back.

Michael looks on, frustrated and needy. “Can you...can you just kiss me? Please.” He breathes. “Alex, I know you want this, too.”

“Of course I do.”

There’s another lunging attempt.

“But don’t want _just_ this.” Alex holds Michael steady and at arms distance. “I don’t want some drunken hookup with you that you probably won’t remember and would only regret.”

“I’d never...”

“But _I_ would.” Alex scoots in closer, circling his fingers around Michael's forearms when they fall to rest on his shoulders. He wants to feel connected to Michael, as best he can. “I want everything with you, Michael. Kissing and what we both know comes after but...I want to talk too. I want you sober enough _to_ talk. And I want you single.”

Michael shakes his head, giving Alex a look of pure wonder. “She hurt you and still…”

Alex simply shrugs and Michael flops back against the mattress.

“God damn, valiant, honor-bound soldier.”

“I’m gonna choose to take that as a compliment,” Alex says warmly and Michael snickers even as he rolls to his side, tucking his hand under his chin for sleep.

Alex opts not to finish the rest of his drink, not trusting what state he’d be left in if he did, and places it near the cluttered sink instead. There is a piece of paper creased and water-stained with a lengthy equation circled many times over in dark ink. Clearly, that determination is still there within Michael.

“Hey, Guerin.”

Michael grunts from against his pillow, just barely awake.

“Why don’t I come by in the morning? I’ll bring the latest from the Caulfield files. And coffee. Cause I think you’re gonna need it.”

“Bring bagels and you have deal. None of that fat-free cream cheese, though.”

“Deal.”

Alex turns off the overhead lights and shuts the door the trailer behind him. The headlights of his Jeep reflect against the window behind which he knows Michael must already be fast asleep. He puts the car in reverse and begins his drive home - feeling hope for so many things for the first time in a long while.


End file.
